“I’ve got him,” Beaudine said from where she knelt on the tundra next to Quinn. Her voice was muffled against her gloves as she held the binoculars.
“You mean them,” Quinn said, glancing over so he could see which way to swing his scope. “Volodin and his daughter?”
“No,” Beaudine said, “I haven’t found Volodin yet. I mean Zolner — or at least some guy setting up to shoot with a big-ass rifle.”
Quinn backed off the magnification on his scope to get a wider field of view and then scanned back and forth until he found what Beaudine was looking at — a man kneeling to deploy the bipod on the fore-end of a very large rifle.
Grabbing his pack, Quinn took out a small notebook and the stub of a yellow pencil. He left the bipod on the Lapua folded flush with the barrel, opting to rest the fore-end on the pack in front of him instead. Once it was situated like he wanted it, he settled down behind the scope, belly and legs pressed against the wet snow, pencil in his teeth.
He zoomed in the magnification on the scope to get a better look now that he had a target. There was always a chance that this guy could be some Inupiaq hunter out for caribou — but Quinn doubted it.
“Follow his line of sight,” Quinn said as he put the crosshairs in his reticle and counted the number of hash marks that bracketed the man’s torso. The snow had slowed, but errant flakes still made it difficult to see across the wide-open space. “See if you can locate who or what he’s setting up on.”
“Already on it,” Beaudine said, putting the binoculars to work.
“Let me know when you find them,” Quinn said, running through the litany of formulas he’d learned a decade before when practicing extreme long-range shooting. The DOPE — or Data On Previous Engagements — that the Lapua’s previous owner had written in the small notebook went out to 2000 meters — well within the capabilities of the rifle, but far beyond anything in Quinn’s confidence level, especially now, beaten down, half frozen — and severely out of practice. For a blustering killer, Igoshin appeared to be a meticulous record keeper when it came to his shooting data. Quinn could understand the numbers but he didn’t read Cyrillic so he double-checked everything with Beaudine and made pencil notes in English in the book. The DOPE was measured in meters, which was crucial to know, since that dictated the formula he would use to figure the range using the milliradian divisions on the crosshairs of his scope.
“Anything?” he said to Beaudine, in an effort to keep her relaxed and communications open while he alternately scribbled notes and peered through the scope. Zolner appeared to be going through the same process of calculating a firing solution on Volodin’s position, wherever that was.
“Hold your horses…” Beaudine’s voice trailed off as she scanned. “Got ’em. Looks like they wrecked their four-wheeler… ran it into a ditch or something. Too bad for us they’re up and moving around though. Hard to say for sure, but it’s gotta be them — older guy and a female. They’re having some difficulty getting the machine pushed back onto four wheels.”
“I need to borrow a sock,” he said, holding out his hand but keeping an eye on his target through the scope.
“A what?”
“A sock,” Quinn said again. “It’s okay if it’s wet. Just hand me one from your pack. Quickly.”
“Okay, okay,” Beaudine said, tugging her pack closer so she could search through it. She passed him a damp wool sock and gave a slow shake of her head. “To each his own. Weird to find out you got this particular fetish now.”
Quinn chuckled. “You sound so much like Jacques.” He handed back the sock as soon as she gave it to him. “Do me a favor and fill that up with dirt and sand… anything you can scrape up and put in it. Gravel will be better, but not snow if you can help it.”
Still kneeling, she snatched back the sock while Quinn watched the man at the other end of his scope hunker down beside his rifle, clearing a level spot for the bipod. The .375 CheyTac was a large gun, capable of shooting flatter and much farther than even the .338 Lapua. On open ground with nothing to use as cover except the ATV, Quinn’s only chance against an experienced shooter behind such a rifle was to take the first shot and make it count.
“I think I put some caribou shit in there,” Beaudine said, handing back the sock. “You can keep it after this.”
Working quickly, but surely, Quinn removed enough of the slurry of dirt and rock that he could tie an overhand knot in the top of the sock. He shoved this grapefruit-size beanbag under the butt of the Lapua. With his right hand on the pistol grip and ready to work the trigger, he folded his left across his chest, gripping the sock of gravel and pulling the stock into the pocket of his shoulder. Alternately squeezing or releasing pressure on the sock, he was able to adjust his point of aim by lowering or raising the angle of the rifle.
Davydov had said his boss was a big man, describing him as two meters tall. That put him over six and a half feet. Quinn estimated someone of that height would be roughly 48 inches kneeling. Squeezing the sock, he moved the Lapua’s point of aim so the crosshairs of his reticle were centered at the base of Zolner’s knees, estimating the Russian’s kneeling body filled nine tenths of the gap between the crosshairs and the first mil-dot.
“Now it’s time for that weaponized math,” he said.
“This is just great,” Beaudine grunted. “And I told my teacher, Mrs. Umholtz, I would never have to use math.”
“Seriously,” he said. “I need your help checking my work. What’s forty-eight times twenty-five point four?”
Beaudine took her cell out of her jacket pocket and punched in the numbers. “Twelve hundred nineteen point two,” she said. “You’re figuring how far away he is using the scope?”
“Right,” Quinn said. “Now divide that number by point nine and that gives me approximate range in meters.”
“Thirteen hundred fifty-four point six,” Beaudine said. Groaning, she stretched out on the soggy ground next to Quinn. Both elbows on the ground in front of her, she raised the binoculars back up to her eyes.
Quinn took a deep breath. “Nearly a mile.”
“Okay, I’ve got Zolner,” she said. “So now you just dial in that distance on the scope and shoot him?”
“I wish it were that simple,” Quinn said, as much to himself as Beaudine. “At this distance I have to account for a lot of variables… My brain is too fuzzy, so I’m gonna need you to use your calculator.”
“Damn you, Mrs. Umholtz,“ Beaudine said. “Looks like math can be a life or death…” Her voice trailed off as she studied something through the binoculars. “Hang on, Zolner’s up to something.”
Quinn watched through the reticle as the Russian shifted his position so his rifle was pointed toward them.
“What the hell?” Beaudine said. “How could he have seen us?”
Quinn kept his eye on Zolner, who seemed to be scanning with the CheyTac’s scope. “Check on Volodin and see what he’s up to,” he said. “But move slowly and don’t stand up. There’s a chance Zolner is just looking for us. The Arctic Cat will stand out, but our overwhites will make us hard to differentiate from the snow at this range.”
Beaudine inched around, her belly making slurping sounds against the wet tundra as she stayed pressed flat to the snow. “Okay,” she said at length. “The girl is looking in our direction through a set of binoculars. She must have been checking for anyone tailing her and saw the four-wheeler.”